Foreword

“We have all sat at his feet.” So wrote the late Louis Fischer in the New York Times (November 21, 1965), referring to the several generations of Western scholars and students of Russian history and politics who were privileged to use materials from Boris Nicolaevsky’s renowned library and archive of the Russian revolution and with whom Nicolaevsky shared his encyclopedic knowledge and unique understanding of developments in Russia. Most of the participants in this collective tribute have vivid memories of long, extraordinarily rewarding conversations with Nicolaevsky, in Europe, New York, or California, and of elusive bits of information or documents, memoirs, or the like, which only he could supply and which instantly clarified a heretofore hopeless historical puzzle. All of the contributors have benefited from Nicolaevsky’s pathbreaking historical studies and analyses of Soviet politics. In a very practical sense, then, this memorial volume is an acknowledgment of each author’s profound debt to Nicolaevsky.

Boris Ivanovich Nicolaevsky was born October 20, 1887, in the Ural town of Belebei, the son of an eighth-generation Russian Orthodox priest. Growing to maturity in a surprisingly enlightened and progressive home, and exposed firsthand to the political, social, and economic injustices of provincial life in late tsarist Russia, Nicolaevsky was stirred by the literary ferment and caught up in the swirl of popular unrest and rebellion that was to culminate in 1905; he was wholly committed to the Social Democratic movement while still in his teens. By the time of the February Revolution he had paid the inevitable price of revolutionary activism; all told, he had spent some thirty-one months in tsarist jails and another seven years in four terms of exile, three in the frozen Arctic and one in eastern Siberia. These crucial early chapters in Nicolaevsky’s life are described by Professor Ladis Kristof in the carefully researched biographical study, “B. I. Nicolaevsky: The Formative Years,” with which this volume begins.

Nicolaevsky first became interested in history and journalism as a gymnasium student in Samara. It was in Petrograd in 1917, however, that his lifelong passion for what Kristof aptly calls “the making and study of Russia’s socio-political history” was first demonstrated most clearly. On the one hand, Nicolaevsky was on the editorial board of Rabochaia gazeta and, affiliated with the Martov “Internationalist” wing of the Menshevik organization, was a member of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Russian Soviet of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies. On the other hand, he was the Soviet’s representative on a commission headed by the well-known historian P. E. Shchegolev, created to investigate the tsarist okhrana archives. Many years later, recalling the long days spent poring over old documents, letters, and police reports for the Shchegolev commission, Nicolaevsky was to write that “my systematic work on questions relating to the Russian and international revolutionary movements dates precisely from that time.”

Nicolaevsky continued his historical investigations for the Shchegolev commission even after the October Revolution. Moreover, in the earliest months of Soviet rule he played a leading role in the organization of official Soviet archives. Thus he was closely associated with the main Soviet archival administration in the beginning of 1918 and later, from 1919 to 1921, he was director of the Historical Revolutionary Archive in Moscow. During this period Nicolaevsky remained active in the leadership of the Menshevik Party. On behalf of the party’s Central Committee he traveled throughout Russia, crossing and recrossing the battle zones of the Civil War. In the autumn of 1918 he was an observer at the Ufa Conference of Constituent Assembly representatives. While traveling in Siberia, in 1919, Nicolaevsky’s sensibilities were shocked by the plight of peasants under the Kolchak regime; upon his return to Moscow he appealed for a united revolutionary front against Kolchak. However, when the Soviet regime tightened political controls after the Civil War and the Kronstadt uprising Nicolaevsky was among a group of fifty Mensheviks arrested at the central Menshevik club in Moscow. Detained for a year in the Butyrki prison, he was released and exiled abroad in February, 1922.

Nicolaevsky’s affiliation with the Soviet archival administration did not come to a halt with his forced departure from Soviet Russia. In 1924 he accepted an invitation from D. B. Riazanov, director of the newly established Marx-Engels Institute, to become the institute’s Berlin representative, a position which he held until Riazanov’s arrest and the merger of the Marx-Engels Institute with the Lenin Institute in 1931. For the Marx-Engels Institute, Nicolaevsky hunted through central and western Europe tracking down and collecting unique source materials on the international workers’ and socialist movements, particularly on the periods of the 1848 revolutions and the First International, and on the activities of Russian revolutionaries abroad. He also worked with Riazanov in preparing for publication the complete works of Marx and Engels, a project interrupted by Riazanov’s arrest. During this time Nicolaevsky remained involved in the Menshevik leadership. Thus in 1922 he began to write for the Sotsialisticheskii vestnik (Socialist Courier), which had been founded by Martov and Rafael Abramovich a year earlier. From its inception until it ceased publication in 1965, the Sotsialisticheskii vestnik was the focal point of all Menshevik activity abroad; for much of this period Nicolaevsky was one of the journal’s main supports.

At the time of the Nazis’ triumph in Germany, Nicolaevsky was associated with the archive of the German Social Democratic Party in Berlin. When the German Social Democratic leadership was forced to flee Germany, Nicolaevsky was left with the dangerous task of somehow transferring the party’s file to safety. Ultimately he superintended the shipment from Berlin of two full boxcars of invaluable archival materials. Included were manuscripts of Marx, Engels, Bebel, and Liebknecht and the archive of the First International. Many of these documents were put into the hands of the International Institute of Social History just then being organized in Amsterdam. In the years immediately preceding the Second World War, the Amsterdam institute became a storehouse for historical documents smuggled out of German hands from all over eastern and central Europe. Nicolaevsky became director of the institute’s important Paris branch.

Of course, any hope that socialist archives in Amsterdam and Paris would be safe from the Nazis was dashed with the German occupation of Holland and the capitulation of the French in 1940. The rich holdings of the Institute of Social History in Amsterdam were successfully spirited away to England just before the institute was taken over by the Germans. The quick collapse of the French resistance was so unexpected that transfer of materials from the institute’s Paris section was much more difficult. Moreover, in 1934-35, as a specialist in Russian history, Nicolaevsky had figured prominently in the exposure as a crude forgery of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a major document in the Nazi campaign against the Jews. Thus the Nazis in Paris were looking for Nicolaevsky, as well as for the archives under his control. Ultimately, a substantial portion of Nicolaevsky’s library did fall into German hands; however, many of the most valuable items both from his personal collection and from the Paris archive of the Institute of Social History were saved. Part of this material was taken to the provinces and kept in the cellars of farmers on the Loire until after the war. A vital part was entrusted to the American Ambassador to France, William Bullitt, just before the fall of France. Bullitt brought these materials to the United States as personal baggage. Nicolaevsky himself successfully evaded the Nazis, departing France for the United States in November, 1940.

Nicolaevsky was to live in this country for over twenty-five years, first in New York and from 1964, in California. He died in Menlo Park, California, on February 21, 1966, at the age of 78. This last full chapter in Nicolaevsky’s life provides the focus for the essay by the late distinguished Professor Philip E. Mosely, “Boris Nicolaevsky: The American Years.” In a memorial service held in New York after Nicolaevsky’s death George Kennan paid tribute to him and acknowledged America’s debt to Nicolaevsky in these words: “I know of no one . . . whose personality better reflected the merits and ideals of the spiritual and political world to which he belonged than Boris Ivanovich. . . . If today the interest in Russia and the study of Russia in this country, and particularly among our youth, are incomparably deeper and more serious than was the case thirty years ago, we owe this in no small measure to Boris Ivanovich, to his inexhaustible interest in everything that was taking place in his homeland, to his long and sustained literary endeavor.”

Nicolaevsky’s death interrupted a number of ambitious projects upon which he was at work. Among the most notable of these were several volumes of largely unknown documents, with detailed commentaries, relating to the history of the Russian Social Democratic movement from 1908 to 1912. Initiated under the sponsorship of the Research Program on the History of the CPSU, this project is now being completed by Nicolaevsky’s widow and long-time associate, Anna M. Bourguina. During his lifetime, Nicolaevsky had published three major historical studies, several hundred essays, and some half-dozen important document collections. His works have appeared in ten languages. The laborious, often frustrating task of tracking down and identifying these writings was undertaken for this volume by Anna Bourguina (see pages 322-41). Suffice it to note here that Nicolaevsky’s published works include a now-classic book on the notorious double agent Evno Azef; a pioneering biographical study of Marx done in collaboration with O. Maenchen-Helfen; a penetrating investigation of forced labor under Stalin (co-authored with David Dallin); and important essays on such varied subjects as Chernyshevsky in Siberia, secret societies and the First International, and the murder of Sergei Kirov.

In the mid-thirties, Nicolaevsky began analyzing contemporary developments in Stalin’s Russia for the Sotsialisticheskii vestnik on a more or less regular basis. Appalled by the human impact of collectivization and repelled by the purges and terror, Nicolaevsky now devoted increasing attention to the study of Soviet politics. The best known of his periodic political reports, which continued over some thirty years, is “The Letter of an Old Bolshevik,” an inside account of developments in the Soviet Union on the eve of the purges, based on private conversations between Nicolaevsky and Bukharin in Paris in the spring of 1936. “The Letter of an Old Bolshevik,” termed by George Kennan “the most authoritative and important bit of source material on the background of the purges,” was republished in 1965 in Power and the Soviet Elite, a collection of Nicolaevsky’s essays edited by Janet D. Zagoria. Reviewing Power and the Soviet Elite in the Russian Review (July, 1966), Professor Robert C. Tucker observed: “For many in the present generation of Anglo-American scholars in Russian studies, Nicolaevsky has been and remains in the fullest sense a mentor. Over many years his articles on current Soviet developments . . . have been a never failing source of information and stimulation. They have taught us how to analyze leadership politics in the Soviet one-party system. And his assiduous researches into the Russian revolutionary past and contributions to the history of the Soviet Communist Party have given us models in the writing of political history.” Emphasizing the importance of documents collected and edited by Nicolaevsky for an understanding of the early history of the Bolshevik Party, Professor Leonard Schapiro observed in the New York Review of Books (September 22, 1966), “It is no exaggeration to say that anyone who ignores this material in writing about the period will write nonsense.” Recalling the feverish energy and remarkable resourcefulness with which Nicolaevsky instinctively unearthed, collected, and interpreted historically valuable documents, publications, and memoirs, Alexander Dallin wrote in Problems of Communism (May-June, 1966), “Only he could find them, decipher them, and make sense of them; but what treasures they held!”

A few words should be said about the genesis of this volume. The idea of organizing a festschrift honoring Nicolaevsky to be presented on October 20, 1967, his eightieth birthday, was Professor Kristof’s. In the fall of 1965 Kristof made plans for such a volume and invited associates and admirers of Nicolaevsky, most of them well-known specialists in the Russian field, to participate in the project. At the time of Nicolaevsky’s death a few essays had been received and a number of others were in preparation. Consequently, it was agreed not to halt work on the project; what had been started as a festschrift would become a memorial volume. Subsequently, for one reason or another, some prospective contributors withdrew; other scholars formerly associated with Nicolaevsky were invited to take their place. During this time, Kristof’s work in connection with the book was handicapped by health problems and even more by the pressure of other obligations. Consequently, the practical task of reorganizing and editing the volume has devolved for the most part upon myself and my wife, Janet.

The editors wish to thank the numerous people who helped make publication of this memorial collection of essays possible. Our greatest debt is, of course, to our distinguished authors, many of whom submitted their contributions what has seemed ages ago and have remained loyal to the project despite endless delays. I should add that the essays of two American scholars who wished to honor Nicolaevsky, Professor Terence Emmons of Stanford University and the late Louis Fischer, do not appear in this volume. Their contributions, excerpts from larger works in preparation at the time they were submitted, have long since been published elsewhere in full. Thanks are due Frederick A. Praeger for permission to use the photograph of Nicolaevsky which first appeared in Power and the Soviet Elite as the frontispiece to this volume, and to Jane Kristof who prepared the index. Most important, the editors are deeply indebted to the Russian and East European Institute, Indiana University, for providing the generous subsidy which made publication of this volume possible; to Edith G. Albee, Editor of the Indiana University Press International Affairs Center Publications; and to Sally Neylon of the Indiana University Press who had the unenviable task of readying the manuscript for publication and also to Linda Bippen who saw it through the press.

Wardsboro, Vermont

August, 1971

Alexander Rabinowitch

NOTE ON DATES AND TRANSLITERATION

Unless otherwise indicated, dates of events in Russia prior to 1918 are given according to the Julian calendar, used until February, 1918, when the Gregorian calendar was officially adopted. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Julian calendar was twelve and thirteen days, respectively, behind the Gregorian calendar of the West. Transliteration is according to the system used by the Library of Congress with some minor modifications. Thus proper names are in some cases spelled in their more familiar English forms.